Instagram may soon bring a personal touch to its Reels, as the company confirmed to TechCrunch that it’s working on a new ‘Spins’ feature. The feature enables other users to swap out text or audio in someone else’s initial Reel.
For all intents and purposes, this would make Spins a meme template maker. By swapping out a Reel’s caption, you can apply the video to a different, humorous scenario.
A beta version of Spins was first revealed via screenshots on X by reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi.
If Paluzzi’s screenshots are any indication, creators would be credited for their original Reel every time someone makes a Spin of it. These screenshots also suggest the inclusion of a Spins toggle, which you can turn on or off before you publish a Reel.
So far, Reels has been pretty much a shot-for-shot copy of TikTok, with its FYP-like design, vertical video style, and ‘Remix’ function, which, to be honest, is just Instagram’s answer to TikTok duets.
But this feature offers something entirely new. Although users on TikTok often repurpose other users’ content to fit a variety of meme contexts, TikTok doesn’t really have a comparable feature to Instagram Spins.
As Reels slowly catch up with TikTok — with Instagram being downloaded 767 million times compared to TikTok’s 733 million times in 2023 — Spins might be the thing that helps Reels win this war. Especially with TikTok’s prospective ban in the US.
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